It’s been quite several weeks, who even knows, since we began seriously eating lunch, I mean dinner, with the devotion and dedication any kind of routine change requires. I keep waiting, because of the nature of the universe, for the whole habit to devolve into chaos and trouble, but it hasn’t yet. In fact, it is really, next to Jesus, the true answer to all of our problems, or feels like it anyway. Not that Jesus is just there to solve problems. Sorry Jesus.
Someone lovely asked in a comment which I never answered because I’m terrible at commenting on my own blog, what about super? Don’t the children need food more often than once a day? It was a perfectly sensible question and it made me pause and consider what on earth the children have been eating, and is it ok. And the answer is, YES. The children do keep eating all day, or something. The food of the day continues on sort of like this.
Breakfast. The children get themselves breakfast. It’s all prefab now–bagels and cornflakes and hot chocolate. Gone are the days of me toiling to make something interesting for them, like oatmeal, or apple crumble, or cream of wheat, or pancakes. Basically they like making themselves their own food, although I think they feel a certain fond regret for the glorious breakfasts of the past. Maybe I should start to work them in on holidays or something. I just never love standing around watching a child smear oatmeal all over the floor and stool and table, so as soon as they could work the toaster, I ditched it. I, on the other hand, after being up for quite a long time, go down and make a new pot of tea and either softly boil two eggs, or put a fried egg on an Aldi sausage so that it feels like I’m eating an egg on toast. I’m not, of course, but there’s the illusion. While I’m doing that, I yell at the children for trashing the kitchen.
Which brings us to the new main culinary event of the day.
Dinner, although we still call it Lunch.
So sometime between noon and one, depending on the chaos of the moment, I, or on Wednesdays, Matt, rush in and pull together the lunch, which is, and this is partly what’s so remarkable, planned for. How it’s possible to plan for a meal in advance I haven’t yet discovered, it’s just happening to me, like salvation. So last week on Monday, it being so nice, we grilled hotdogs and sausage and while I was sorting that out, I made white bean and sausage soup for the next day, which turned out, shockingly, not to be as popular as the hot dogs. Then on Wednesday, while I was, in the most dated and fabulous way possible, doing up pork chops and mashed potatoes and a nice sautéed sort of vegetable something, I also made peanut sauce for Thursday. Some days I’m really in there cooking ahead of time, but only if I’m making at least two dinners at once.
The key being, as soon as I can tear Matt away from his work, that we all sit down and eat nicely together, with music, and candles, and maybe a modicum of wine. The children, who are stupid, so the scripture warned me this morning, mostly eat whatever it is, and if they don’t like it, we make them eat it anyway. Then they clean up the kitchen while Matt and I sit around waiting for the clock to come to the top or bottom of the hour because you can’t just get up and start working on minute 38 or 42. That would be madness.
So that’s dinner, well lunch. And I love it so much. From thence forth in the day, I do not experience the sensation of hunger. I have no more need of food. Sometimes, if the afternoon wears on in a laborious and trying way, I might take a little cup of hot milk with just a hint of Cointreau in it, up with me to bed where I read to the children. But Matt is never hungry again until the next lunch time.
There are, however, the children, and they do continue on eating food. First of all, as soon as lunch is over, they are hungry again and begin eating apples and bananas. After that goes one for an hour or so, they move on to roll ups, which are gross cold tortillas with Nutella and peanut butter and sometimes Jelly. If they get really fractious, they might have a cup of soup, or I might bake them a large pizza. Once I get my mixer back, I will probably begin making all kinds of baked items that they can easily consume without making a terrible mess. They go in and out and eat whatever suits them, and I don’t worry about it any more. And, and this is the best part, I don’t clean up the kitchen anymore, ever. If you, a child, make yourself a piece of toast with butter and sugar and cinnamon, and pour yourself a large glass of milk, you, a child, will clean it up. I, your mother, will not clean it up, because I’m not eating toast. Let us be perfectly clear, We Had Lunch, the kitchen is now clean, Sweep Up Your Own Crumbs. Sorry, didn’t mean to begin yelling.
Not only is there no longer the stress of three whole kitchen clean ups a day, I don’t have to stop and wonder what to feed everyone. We can do all kinds of stuff in the evening, which things used to be a huge pain and a frustration. And, strangely, I’m getting more stuff done because I can work into the late afternoon if I want, without interrupting myself to feed everyone. And now that the weather is nice, the children can be outside playing and even indulge in the ice cream truck whenever it comes, even 5 o’clock, because if they want ice cream for super, I’m not the least worried they will sit around picking at something I agonized over in the kitchen for several hours. Mercifully, the ice cream truck doesn’t ever seem to come at noon. Then I guess I might be locked in battle.
Anyway, that turned out to be a much longer and more boring explanation of my life than I intended. Sorry. Wish I could give you all those minutes back. I will arise and go work, and pray you all have as nice a day as it suits you to have. Pip Pip.
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